Health tourism is probably one of the most important, because it is not based on pastime, but on the care of the basic vital value - human health. Throughout the world, due to accelerated urbanization, people experience a deterioration in the activity of life-supporting systems and a decrease in the functional capabilities of the body, the occurrence of dangerous diseases.
Fatigue accumulates in the body - mental and physical, which is why today the issue of a healthy lifestyle is everywhere relevant. Many people strive to maintain normal physical shape, while not forgetting about spiritual enrichment.
That is why health tourism in all countries is developing so rapidly today. Literally in the last ten years, the number of people combining their vacations with therapy has increased on our planet by 10%.
Balneology as a therapeutic holiday has existed since the time of the ancient Greeks, who went to Epidavra to restore their health - to the sanctuary of the healing physician Asclepius, where gymnastics schools - paleastra, baths and hotels were built for them. Even in the Roman Empire they treated with mineral waters, as evidenced by the ruins of structures in many of today's already popular European resorts.
Health tourism as a form of recreation has many distinctive features. Firstly, the minimum stay at the resort should be about three weeks, the only way to achieve a tangible effect. Secondly, the price for staying at the resort is much higher than in an ordinary tourist center.
And although today this type of tourism develops relatively cheap tours, most vacationers are wealthy clients who, instead of a standard set of medical services, focus on individual programs for therapy. Another special feature that distinguishes health tourism is the age requirement of vacationers, who used to lean towards the older generation. However, recently this market has been undergoing changes: an ever wider circle of consumers, including those within the framework of corporate trips, visit multifunctional health centers.
Therapeutic recreation pursues the following goals: to create truly comfortable conditions for therapy, recovery and recovery of the human body. Moreover, he uses all his resources: ballroom, climate, peloid, phyto, airo, thalasso, speleotherapy, etc.
Health tourism in Russia originates from the North Caucasus. It was here that in the 19th century in Zheleznovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Essentuki the first balneological resorts were opened , and then the climatic ones began to take shape in Sochi, Yalta, Yevpatoriya and in other regions of the Crimean Black Sea coast.
Today, the most popular Russian resorts are the mud and climatic resort Anapa, balneological sanatoriums Arshan in Buryatia, Belokurikha in the Altai Territory, Darasun in the Chita Region, the resort group Mineral Caucasian Waters - Kislovodsk, Gelendzhik, Pyatigorsk, Essentuki, Zheleznovodsk, as well as a climatic balneo - mud holiday homes in Svetlogorsk, Zelenogorsk, Otradnoye, Kuldur, Nalchik, Paratunka, Adler, Dagomys, Khost, etc.
The development of tourism of health and medical directions is facilitated by certain environmental conditions, for example, the availability of resources that are able to provide an effective combination of recreation and restoration of people's health and ability to work, as well as factors that positively affect the inner, psychological world of a person.